


New LA Noir

by jaxstronomy



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles X
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-13 05:13:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7963813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaxstronomy/pseuds/jaxstronomy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He would have been happy to never see Mina Cross again. When she walked into the diner that night, she brought with her a simple mission. But no mission is ever simple in New LA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There weren’t enough places to drink in New LA. All Frye wanted was a dingy bar with cheap liquor and bad lighting and people who’d leave him the hell alone, but he was stuck with the diner. One more night lit by neon faux nostalgia, and, well, he’d probably continue drinking to forget where he was getting his drinks from. 

The door opened. Someone was asking him a question, but he wasn’t listening, just watching her walk in, all long legs and sharp curves and heartbreak. To anyone else, she was no more out of place than any other woman with BLADE patches and body armor come to wash another shift out of her head. 

He knew better. She walked up to the bar like she was dropping behind enemy lines, and ordered her drinks like she was going into battle. “Bourbon on the rocks, and a Scotch, neat.”

She’d sit down, wait for the drinks, and slide the Scotch in front of the empty seat next to her. Mina Cross would play that kind of game, expecting him to join her. Daring him, even. 

No point keeping her waiting. He took his appointed place at the bar, accepted the glass. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard that order.”

“It’s been a while.” She tapped her glass to his, a gesture of cool courtesy rather than convivial warmth. He didn’t have to ask how she found him. He’d been coming here every night since she left, back to the crowded bar where he’d first bought her that familiar bourbon on the rocks. “There's a job I’m working on,” she said, looking somewhere past the lines of bottles on the wall. 

“Good for you,” he grumbled into his whiskey, trying to avoid catching a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye. He already knew what she looked like- hard, weary, and beautiful. 

“Not making small talk, Christoph.” She spat out his name like it was a dose of poison. “Something’s targeting our field teams. Reclaimers got hit first, but Curators too. And Prospectors.” 

The implication struck him like a bullet to the chest. “Phog’s mixed up in this.” 

“His team missed their last three checkpoints,” she said, sliding a comm log across the bar. “Wouldn’t be here if I thought it was coincidence.”

He looked down the list of timepoints and check-ins. Some inconsistency in check-in regularity, not unusual for his brother, but nothing for the last twelve hours. He wouldn’t say it, but Mina was right to be concerned. “Give me the coordinates. I’m going after him.”

“Not without me.” She turned to face him, golden eyes struggling to stay stern. They froze and looked at each other for a long moment before she scraped up an ultimatum. “Come with me, or stay here stress-testing your mim’s toxin filter. Your choice.” 

It was a good barb, but weakly delivered. Couldn’t fault her on that one - he had a few retorts in mind, but they’d come off equally half-hearted. “Fine,” he conceded. “Your job. Your rules. Just like always.”

She pushed back from the bar, turning to face the door. “East Gate. Oh-five-hundred hours. I’d ask for sober but I don’t believe in miracles.” 

He watched her walk out into the beginnings of a rainstorm outside, sighed, and pushed his glass towards the bartender. “Another Scotch. Make it a double.”


	2. Chapter 2

Frye had never liked caves. They were universally dark and damp, full of blind corners and nasty indigens. The ones in Sylvalum were the worst of the bunch. They tried to dress up nice, all meadows of lichen and crystalline ferns, then sprang a pack of cantors or a swarm of sacrifoles on you. Everywhere else, caves had the decency to look like death traps.

He followed Mina through the antechamber, bidding a reluctant farewell to the light spilling in from the far-off sky. “Cave could have blocked their comms,” he said, daring to hope that this was all a simple technical error.

“Any decent cave team uses comm relays.” She was kneeling, her back turned to him as she set up a small antenna. “Phog’s absentminded, not stupid.”

He knew that was supposed to get a rise out of him, but still took the bait. “You trying to say something?”

“Oh, you’re not stupid. You’re willfully ignorant.” She turned on the device and rose, still refusing to face him. “If the distinction matters to you.”

He glared at the back of her head, following her movements through the maze of rocks and debris, then surged forward, grabbing her shoulder. “Do you always have to be like this? Can you say that to my face for once in your goddamn-”

“Quiet!” She pushed back, clamping a hand over his mouth and shoving him roughly against the wall. He stopped himself from protesting as he looked out over her head, pressed against his chest in a taunting caricature of intimacy, and saw the Ictus coming around the corner.

The gleaming carapace of the beast loomed over them, its passage breaking the silence of the cave with a soft creaking of chitin against chitin. She lowered her hand, allowing him to whisper, “Big son of a bitch, isn’t he.”

She nodded, stepped back, and signaled for him to follow. She moved along the stones at the cave’s edge with her typical deliberate precision. One of her many talents that he’d never be able to comprehend. He resigned himself to following at half her pace, allowing her to take the lead, trying and failing to keep up with her as always. Then, he spotted it - a flash of metal, under a pile of rubble she’d sidestepped without a second thought.

“Wait,” he called after her, as quietly as he could manage. She turned, splitting a harsh look between him and the threatening indigen. Her glare softened when he indicated the hint of wreckage. They moved towards it in tandem, and he carefully removed the rocks, allowing her a better look at the tangle of metal and wires beneath.

“Good eye.” She lifted the pile of wreckage, turned it in her hands. “Must be their relay. Ictus could have buried it.” She folded it, packed it into her bag, inclined her head towards the passage. “It’s headed towards a dead end. Let’s move while we can."

It was easier to follow her now - she’d slowed her pace, picking footholds with enough space for larger, less nimble feet. Almost as if she was falling back into old habits. Not like he wasn’t reminded of all those missions back in the war, following that slight and powerful figure into any number of Ganglion strongholds, stapling down hordes of Marnucks while she tore into their flank like a whirlwind. Seemed like a lifetime ago, but what did a lifetime mean when you’d never grow old?

She stopped, touched his arm, and spread her hand in front of a shoulder-high pile of rubble. As if that was supposed to tell him anything. After a long look that she undoubtedly meant to be meaningful, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward. The air current was weak, but still slipped through his glove, cooling his palm. 

“Something behind here.” He said, and she nodded a response. “We should clear it.”

“Out of the question.” She hissed, looking over her shoulder. “Forgotten about the huge fuck-off Ictus over there?”

“If Phog’s behind there-”

“It’ll do him a fuck of a lot of good if we get ourselves killed,” she snapped, her voice biting and harsh. “You can fuck right off with your martyrdom complex, like hell you’re going to keep anyone safe if you can’t even take five goddamn seconds to think about what’ll happen if you get cornered-”

Somehow, below her angered voice, he heard a soft scratching sound. Soft, but getting louder. He didn’t need a visual to know that he needed to move, and fast. He pivoted around her, pressing his back flat against the rocks. She froze, face locked in a grimace, body stiff and unmoving. She turned her head over her shoulder to look at him, mouthing a silent curse.

As much as he hated to admit it, he didn’t like the idea of going dancing with an Ictus solo - or even with Mina. Maybe they could have handled it back then. Now they couldn’t pull off a damn search and rescue without trying to tear each other’s throats out. 

He blinked, trying to refocus, looking at a point up the passageway, watching the spore-plants moving softly as if caught in a gentle breeze. Another air current. He took Mina’s hand. She tried to pull away, then stopped as he mouthed, “Trust me.”

He led her along the wall, giving up on any attempt at stealth as he moved towards what he hoped would be their way out of this mess. His hand found an edge, and he pulled them into a narrow passage. Again, she was pressed against his chest, but now she relaxed into him as they watched the blades of the Ictus’ legs apathetically pass. 

Dark as it was, he could still make out a hint of a smile on her face. “So you do pay attention,” she said, possibly even teased, as she slipped past him and into the passage beyond. 

A brief moment, then they were surrounded by light. She held her flashlight high in her left hand, her pistol drawn and held ready in her right as they inched further into the cave. The passage was barely tall enough for him to stand, and he scraped against the walls as he followed.

“We’re coming into a chamber here, must be the other side of that rockfall-” 

She abruptly stopped, holstered her gun, pressed her hand against him as if she could hold him back. He knew that posture all too well. Mina was shocked. She was shocked, and she didn’t want him to know why.

He pushed past her into the chamber beyond, the beam of the flashlight casting the ragged edges of his shadow over the cave floor, the rocks and spores and shattered remnants of mimeosomes. The light swept over him, from one side of the open space to the other, and he tried to follow its asynchronous motion, desperately searching for-

Phog was on the ground, intact but unmoving. Frye didn’t even think, just moved, kneeling, reaching for his wrist, searching desperately for a pulse, barely hearing the barked order, “Cross to Sylvalum Base Eight, Cross to Sylvalum Base Eight. Requesting extraction team at cave two clicks northwest, ASAP. I repeat, extraction team two clicks northwest.”


	3. Chapter 3

Mims felt real enough; wind chilled, wounds itched, Scotch burned. Most of the time, he could forget that he was an elaborate imitation of a human body. Maintenance went out of its way to remind him that he was fundamentally artificial. The corridor was windowless and cold, every surface dull metal, sparse lighting casting blue-tinged shadows around the recovery pods. The pod in front of him held the only clear light, filtering down through Phog’s hair and painting his closed eyes with sterile white.

Frye sat on a cold and unyielding bench, alternating between searching his brother’s face for signs of life and staring at the floor in resignation. The staff drifted through like ghosts, apathetic to his presence. Not much call for bedside manner when the patients were behind glass like specimens, fragile and not to be touched. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his legs, and waited for this wave of guilt to pass.

“You’ve been here the whole time?”

He hadn’t noticed Mina enter. He didn’t bother asking how she knew he was here. As far as he knew, she’d appeared before him like a recurring dream, a familiar image haunting his troubled mind. 

He allowed her to press a cup of coffee into his hands. The dark liquid reflected vague ripples of blue light, coloring the steam rising into the frigid room. “I should have been there.”

“You couldn’t have known,” she said, sitting next to him. He looked at her long enough to see concern in her expression, then turned away.

“And I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. I know.” He scowled, at the coffee, the floor, the whole damned situation, then reached for his jacket pocket, hoping he had enough Scotch left to take the edge off this pain.

“Wait.” He turned to glare at her, expecting a reprimand, but instead saw a flask appear from her vest pocket. “Bourbon’s better in coffee.”

He extended his coffee towards her, and she poured, filling it nearly to the edge. “Since when do you carry a flask?”

She sighed, splashing whiskey into her own drink. “Since I had to stop relying on yours.” 

She was right about the particular charm of bourbon in coffee. Scotch was oily, reluctant to meld with anything more complex than a drop or two of water. Bourbon wasn’t so fussy. Together, bourbon and coffee were more than the sum of their parts - bitter, strong, with a sweet breath of vanilla and a stinging bite of alcohol. 

They sat together for a long moment, drinking their coffee in silence, a silence he eventually broke. “You’re here for a reason.” 

She nodded, as if she needed to confirm his assumption. “I’ve been analyzing the debris from the site. The rockslide wasn’t natural - explosive residue all over it. Phog’s wounds, the remains - not from the Ictus. Weapon marks, some thermal.” She stopped, swirled her coffee in its cup, took a long and pensive sip. “Rest of the team is screaming Wrothians. I know there have been tensions, but-”

“Not their style,” he interjected, frowning. The Wrothians had always been clear that they would prioritize their interests over their relationship with humanity, but ambushing field teams out of nowhere? Didn’t line up with their honor fetish.

“Precisely,” she said, nodding sharply. “I’m going to have a word with Prince Jiarg before HQ gets any ideas. Come with me.”

“Thought we weren’t on working terms.” He said, then looked up at the pod in front of them. “And I can’t leave him.”

“Staring at him won’t make him heal faster.” She set her hand on his shoulder, gentle and firm. “The Wrothians are the best lead we have, and they remember us. Better chance of getting them to talk if we go together.”

“Fine. I’ll go.” He conceded, tensing under her hand. “You ever get tired of being right about everything?”

She rose from the bench and turned towards the door. “Wouldn’t know. I make a lot of mistakes.”

She was three steps down the corridor before he could even begin to respond. He finished his coffee and sighed. It always had to end with her walking away.


End file.
